DePatie-Freleng Enterprises
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DePatie-Freleng Enterprises (sometimes abbreviated to DFE) was a Hollywood-based animation production company, active from 1963 to 1981.
DFE was founded just after the closure of Warner Bros.' famed Termite Terrace animation department, by animation veteran Isadore "Friz" Freleng and partner David Hudson DePatie. Many of the animators who had worked at Warners in the 1950s and 1960s went with them, as well. Their first major production was the opening titles to the first Pink Panther film in 1963, which led to a series of cartoons inspired by the concurrently-running movie series. They won their only Oscar for The Pink Phink in 1964, receiving a further nomination for The Pink Blueprint in 1967.
DePatie-Freleng created more cartoons to be released for theaters and television. They include The Inspector (loosely based on the main character of the live-action Pink Panther movies, Inspector Clouseau), The Super 6, The Houndcats, Super President, Roland and Rattfink, The Ant and the Aardvark, Tijuana Toads, The Blue Racer, Hoot Kloot, The Dogfather, Here Comes The Grump, The Adventures of Dr. Doolittle, The Barkleys, Bailey's Comets, Misterjaw and Crazylegs Crane. The studio also produced the innovative animated sequences in the 1969-1970 television series My World and Welcome to It, based on the drawings of James Thurber.
Like most animated television comedies at the time, The Pink Panther Show contained a laugh track.
DFE was one of the subcontractors for the 1960s Warner Bros. cartoons, along with Format Films. They also produced TV specials (notably a line of Dr. Seuss adaptations made for CBS), and together with Hanna-Barbera Productions and Filmation were responsible for most of the cartoons shown on Saturday morning in the U.S. by the 1970s. One of the TV specials was 1972's The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas, with Tommy Smothers voicing the little bruin who goes out to find Christmas (in the human world) while his fellow bears head for hibernation instead.
In 1981, Freleng retired. DePatie sold the company to Marvel Comics, and it continued under his lead as Marvel Productions. Marvel sold their back catalog to Saban Entertainment in the late 1990s.
